The Skyscraper Museum is devoted to the study of high-rise building, past, present, and future. The Museum explores tall buildings as objects of design, products of technology, sites of construction, investments in real estate, and places of work and residence. This site will look better in a browser that supports web standards, but it is accessible to any browser or Internet device.

Whither Wall Street

Carol Willis

DIRECTOR, THE SKYSCRAPER MUSEUM

Carol Willis is the founder, director, and curator of The
Skyscraper Museum. An architectural and urban historian,
she has researched, taught, and written about the history of
American city building. She is the author of Form Follows
Finance: Skyscrapers and Skylines in New York and Chicago
(Princeton Architectural Press, 1995), which received an AIA
book award and was named "Best Book on North American
Urbanism, 1995" by the Urban History Association. She has
written introductions to several monographs and collections
and has appeared in numerous television documentaries and
radio broadcasts.

Ms. Willis is an Adjunct Associate Professor of Urban Studies
at Columbia University where since 1989 she has taught
in the program The Shape of Two Cities: New York and
Paris in The Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and
Preservation. [watch it now]

Elizabeth Berger

PRESIDENT, DOWNTOWN ALLIANCE

Elizabeth H. Berger joined the Alliance for Downtown New
York--the city's largest Business Improvement District--as
President in November 2007. Ms. Berger has more than
thirty years of experience with state, federal and local
government. An innovator in the field, she established the
non-legal government relations practices at the Law Offices
of Claudia Wagner; LeBoeuf, Lamb Greene & MacRae; and
Lord Day & Lord Barrett Smith. She created the Department
of Government and External Affairs at Lincoln Center
for the Performing Arts and was a member of the Koch
Administration from 1982 through 1989, including 5 years
as Assistant Mayoral Representative to the New York City
Council.

She is an active board director of several New York City
non-profit cultural and civic groups, including the Municipal
Art Society, The Battery Conservancy, Second Stage
Theater, the New York Building Congress, Film Forum
and the American Museum of Natural History Planetarium
Authority, and a mayoral appointee to the Governors Island
Preservation and Education Corporation.[watch it now]

Rob Rogers

Along with Jonathan Marvel, Rob Rogers founded Rogers Marvel Architects in 1992. Based on their work at Battery
Park City, the NYC Department of City Planning, the
NYC Economic Development Corporation and the Lower
Manhattan Development Corporation asked them to design
security and streetscape enhancements for the New York
Financial District, including the New York Stock Exchange.

Custom-designed components for the district include a
fountain in front of the Stock Exchange, "NOGO" sculptural
barriers, and a shallow-foundation turntable barrier. These
elements service street-level amenities such as sidewalk
cafes while also functioning as high-tech security devices.

Other RMA projects include the renovation of the
Landmarked McCarren Pool, in Brooklyn, the Studio
Museum in Harlem, the reconstruction of Pratt Institute's
School of Architecture and the Dartmouth College Arts
Master Plan.[watch it now]

Kent Swig

PRESIDENT, SWIG EQUITIES, LLC

As President of Swig Equities, LLC, an investment and
development firm, Mr. Swig has seen the company through
numerous acquisitions and development projects in New York
City and California. In the past decade, the company has
purchased and developed a major portfolio of properties in
the Financial District, including 44 and 48 Wall Street.

Mr. Swig is also an owner and Co-Chairman of Terra
Holdings, LLC, which owns and operates residential real
estate service firms including Brown Harris Stevens, one of
the oldest and largest residential real estate service providers
in New York City. He is also the owner and President of
Helmsley Spear, LLC, originally founded in 1866, a leader in
commercial real estate focusing on third party office and retail
leasing, asset and property management, and investment
sales.

In addition, Mr. Swig is active in a number of professional,
civic and philanthropic organizations including serving on
the Board of Governors of the Association of Builders and
Owners of New York (ABO); the Board of Directors of the
Realty Foundation, the Downtown Alliance, Wall Street Rising
and Business Executives for National Security (BENS).
[watch it now]

Alexandros Washburn

CHIEF URBAN DESIGNER, NYC DCP

Alexandros E. Washburn, AIA is the Chief Urban Designer
of the City of New York, Department of City Planning. An
architect who has worked both in the private and public
sector, he served as Environment and Public Works Advisor
to US Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then as President of
the Pennsylvania Station Redevelopment Corporation, and
then partner of W Architecture and Landscape Architecture
LLC.

From individual buildings to the most complex infrastructure
projects, he judges success in urban design from the point of
view of the pedestrian. In his daily work, he tries to achieve
the "quantity of Robert Moses with the quality of Jane
Jacobs." And for this missing link--between the human-scale and the mega-project--he turns to another great New
Yorker, Fredrick Law Olmsted, designer of Central Park, for
inspiration. He sees the integration of urbanity and ecology as
the next great wave in city-building. Mr. Washburn is currently
writing a book, The Nature of Urban Design.[watch it now]